Autonomous Trains Market: Trends and Opportunities for the Industry by 2017 - 2025

Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/14/2017 -- Automation in metro and rail systems refer to the procedure by means of which the responsibility for operation management of the trains is transferred to the train control system from the driver, thereby eliminating or in some cases, reducing any human interference in the operations. Rail has a potential opportunity of becoming the most efficient means of transportation in the coming years, as the demand for automated train operations have been found to increase globally. Renowned players operating in this industry, for instance Siemens AG has been working on automated train operations for several years and has also made significant progress in this area. The company delivered one of the first computer-controlled metro trains in 2008 to the city of Nuremberg.

Totally driverless overground and underground trains are becoming the mandate in several cities around the world, including many in Europe. Though the world seems to be hesitant in going fully driverless on mainline rail networks, with the development of Docklands Light Railway, the U.K. rail network might start looking in fully automating the operation of the rail network. Further, in June 2016, the CEO of German railways, Ruediger Grube announced that the German Railways (Deutsche Bahn) would operate with full autonomy on parts of the railway network by 2021, 2022 or 2023. He further said that tests for the same are underway on a part of the railway network in Eastern Germany. Other than Europe, several other cities across the globe are also working towards partially or fully automating their metro and mainline networks. For instance, in December 2016, Yatish Kumar, Director, Research Design and Standards Organisations of Indian Railways announced that driverless metro trains might soon be a reality in Kolkata and the target is to make all the new metro rakes in the city operate under Grade of Automation 3 from March 2018. Thus global adoption of autonomous train operations is expected to strong boost the market growth during the forecast period from 2017 – 2025.

The global autonomous trains market has been segmented on the basis of grade of automation into Grade of Automation 1 (GoA 1), Grade of Automation 2 (GoA 2), Grade of Automation 3 (GoA 3) and Grade of Automation 4 (GoA 4). These various grades of automation refer to the different levels of automated operations of the train. For instance, GoA 1 refers to the manual operation of the train, where in the driver is in charge of controlling the start and stop of the train, handling critical emergencies or sudden diversions and operating the doors. In contrary, GoA 4 corresponds to Unattended Train Operation (UTO). In this mode of automation, train operations are monitored and controlled automatically at all times, with no train attendant or driver on board. Based on train system the global market has been segregated into mainline, freight and mining. The global autonomous trains market has been further classified geographically into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America and Middle East and Africa.

The global autonomous trains market report is inclusive of the market share analysis of the key industry players and the report also offers a strategic overview of their market positioning, product offerings, financials, business strategies and recent developments. The competitive profiling of the leading players in the global autonomous trains market across the five major geographic regions is covered under the scope of the report. Thus the report offers an inclusive study of the global autonomous trains market, along with providing the forecast of the market for the period from 2017 to 2025. Some of the major players operating in the global autonomous trains market include Alstom S.A., Ansaldo STS, Bombardier Transportation, Siemens AG, Thales Group, Mitsubishi Motors and Hitachi Ltd. among others.